design west News - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

April 9, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Design West Summit – 23-25 April 2013

Design West 2013, previously known as the Embedded Systems Confertence, will take place later this month, on 23-25 April to be exact, at San Jose McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California, US. The event will be divided into 22 tracks dealing with software development, hardware design, operating systems, security and more: Android Certificate Program – Two-day hands-on embedded android workshop. Black Hat Summit – The Black Hat Embedded Security Summit will provide electronics professionals with essential information and tools, as well as a forum for the discussion and evaluation of the latest solutions for securing their embedded systems. Training courses will focus on topics such as Network Security, Incident Response, Web Application Security, and Exploit Development. Connectivity and Networking – The Connectivity and Networking track educates design engineers on wired and wireless communications, spanning need-to-know topics from essentials of USB device development to antenna and RF system design. Debugging […]

April 3, 2012June 18, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Green Hills MULTI 6.0 Compiler Improves ARM MCU Performance by up to 40%

Last week at Design West 2012, Green Hills Software announced it had achieved the highest compiler performance scores ever certified by EEMBC CoreMark and that it outperformed the nearest competing compilers by 35.5% using its MULTI 6.0 – Compiler 2012. Benchmarks were completed on 3 ARM Cortex-M4 microcontrollers: Freescale Kinetis K60 MCU @ 100 Mhz – 35.5% improvement over nearest competitor. Freescale Kinetis K70 MCU @ 120 Mhz – 29.6% improvement over nearest competitor. STMicroelectronics STM32F417IGt6 @ 168 MHz – 34.7% improvement over nearest competitor. Since apparently it’s bad marketing to name competitors in press releases, I went directly to the source (EEMBC Coremark benchmark results) to check out the results and competitors (IAR and Keil) for Kinetis K60 MCU. The first thing you may notice is that there are 2 tests per compiler / MCU combination. That’s because there 2 test configurations: Code in internal Flash – Data in internal […]

March 31, 2012March 31, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

ARM Development Studio 5 (DS 5) Demos At Design West

ARM has shot a few video demos of their ARM Development Studio 5 (DS 5), a software development tool suite for ARM platforms, at Design West 2012. The first video shows DS 5 running on the Xilinx Zynq-7000 platform (dual cortex A9 + FPGA), and we can see the memory map, registers, call graphs and stack usage. We can also see real-time processor switching and the function that takes the most CPU resources (profiling). The second videos showcases ARM DS-5 Streamline, a performance analyzer, which helps determine how well programs are running on a Linux or Android platform, on an Samsung Exynos 4210 platform (Origen board?). This tool also to profile both the dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 and ARM Mali-400 MP GPU in the platform. We are shown three types of reports: CPU/GPU Loading Threads usage Power Usage per application The third and last video shows ARM DS 5 on Freescale i.MX6 […]

March 28, 2012July 17, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Virtual Hardware Platforms: Test & Debug Software Before the Silicon is Ready

Historically software could only be tested and debugged when the first silicon sample was ready, and the software team could not participate in the design process. But thanks to Virtual Hardware Platforms, software can be executed at speeds close to real time on an abstract model of the hardware, available long before a design has been completed. The virtual platform is designed to simplify the creation and support of virtual prototypes and allow design teams to begin developing software weeks to months before a hardware prototype is available, and software teams can use it as their application development platform. For example, Freescale is using a Virtual Hardware Platform for their new Vybrid Controllers to emulate both Cortex A5 and Cortex M4 cores, as well as peripherals and run OS such as Linux or MQX before the Controllers are ready (Q2 2012). One Virtual Hardware Platform has just won the ACE […]

March 27, 2012March 27, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Freescale Vybrid Controllers: Cortex A5 + Cortex M4 Solutions

Freescale announced the new Vybrid platform based on Cortex A5 application processor and Cortex-M4 MCU (VF6xx and VF7xx family only) which targets building/home automation and control, industrial automation, point-of-sale systems, medical devices, smart energy equipment, and appliances. There are 5 families of Vybrid Controllers which support the following common features: Video/Camera Interface Unit + optional OpenVG GPU (except VF3xx) Up to 800 MHz data rate DDR3 and LPDDR2 support (except VF3xx) USB 2.0 OTF with Integrated PHY (1 or 2 depending on model) Ethernet 10/100 MAC (1 or 2 depending on model) Display controller (WQVGA to XGA resolutions) High-assurance boot with Crypto Acceleration Up to 1.5 MB on chip SRAM NAND Flash controller and Dual Quad-SPI with eXecute-In-Place(XIP) Dual 12-bit ADC and DAC Here are the 5 families of Vybrid platforms and key differentiating features: VF3xx: ARM Cortex-A5 up to 266 MHz, 1x USB 2.0 OTG, 2x Ethernet, display up […]

March 26, 2012May 5, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

FSLBOT: Freescale (Dancing) Robot Kit

Freescale unveiled the FSLBOT prototype last year (and I missed it!), and today, the company has announced further improvements to the Freescale Tower System mechatronics robot and board, a bipedal robot and development board that allows designers to write software for a variety of sensor applications while making a robot walk and respond to touch, motion, vibration, tilt and other external stimuli. The new version of the robot uses a new programming language based on StickOS, has wireless capabilities and adds an Xtrinsic MAG3110 magnetometer. This robot has been designed with the collaboration of StickOS and CPUStick.com with the goal “to create a tool that would enable casual users and consumers of technology to become creators and innovators”. The Freescale FSLBOT Robot Kit comes with the following: Freescale Tower System mechatronics board powered by a 32-bit ColdFire MCU with 64K of RAM and 512K of flash. Leg mechanics and associated […]

March 21, 2012March 21, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Qualcomm Atheros AR4100P Provides WiFi Connectivity to the Internet of Things

In January, Texas Instruments was the first company (to my knowledge) to release a WiFi chip for the internet of things, the SimpleLink Wi-Fi CC3000, where WiFi is mostly implemented in hardware to lower power consumption. Now, the company has some competition with the announcement of Qualcomm Atheros AR4100P, an improved version of its AP4100 WiFi chipset, including IPv4/IPv6 support. The AR4100 targets the home, enterprise, smart grid and home automation and control applications that have lower data rates and transmit or receive data on an infrequent basis. The AR4100 system-in-package (SIP) features the following: Low energy Power saving modes as low as 5 µA Wake-up times as low as 2.2 ms Support for Quad SPI flash for faster wake times Low system resource requirements Low footprint host driver (25K Flash and 8K RAM) Simple, low-cost wireless system integration LGA package simplifies 2- or 4-layer PCB design Near zero RBOM […]

December 12, 2011July 17, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Design West Summit – 26-29 March 2012

UBM Design announced the schedule and pass pricing for Design West Summit (previously Embedded System Conference) which will now bring 7 summits in one location (San Jose McEnery Convention Center) on 26-29 March 2012: Embedded Systems Conference & Exhibition – Conference Dates: March 26 – 29, 2012. Exhibition Dates: March 27-29, 2012. (See Details below) Android Summit – March 28, 2012 – Everything Android from embedded design to Apps development. Android Certification Program Android Speed Training Android Fundamentals Course on the Expo Floor Android Conference Program Multicore DevCon– March 27 & 28, 2012 – Embedded multicore and multimedia. 7th annual Multicore Conference Courses Multicore Expo Floor Zone Multicore Fundementals Courses Keynote Addresses Industry Addresses Expo floor parties and giveaways BlackHat – March 29, 2012 – One-day conference focused on security in embedded systems. Security Fundementals Course Black Hat Summit Conference Courses Security focused presentations in the expo floor theater Keynotes […]